


though we shall land no more

by miuyi (rainiest)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pathcode Teasers, Gen, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 19:56:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6871237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainiest/pseuds/miuyi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Junmyeon makes a wish and counts to three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	though we shall land no more

**Author's Note:**

> Dear prompter: thank you for still being as obsessed with the pathcode teasers as I am and giving me the opportunity to write this. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> This fic is set in a handful of different places, most of which I've never been to, so please excuse any inaccuracies. For the purposes of this fic, Junmyeon, Jongdae, Baekhyun and Jongin are all the same age. 
> 
> Some [music](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7GuD9virZDA), for those who would like it.
> 
>  **Additional warnings:** swearing, inexplicit sexual content, smoking, alcohol as a coping mechanism, supernatural elements, implied physical abuse, nyctophobia (fear of the dark), natural disasters.
> 
>  
> 
> (Prompt #152)

 

> _“On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.”_
> 
> — J.M. Barrie, _Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up_  
> 

 

 

 

The night falls deep and dark, and with a stubborn chill that clears the streets. Junmyeon switches on the radio and opens his curtains. His breath fogs on the window. He can see every star in the sky when it's cloudless like this, and below them the crystalline lights of Seoul glowing warmly out into the night. A lone car blurs past on the street below. 

At midnight, Junmyeon listens to a voice he knows speaking a language he doesn't and wonders if the sun has set over Europe, if the same stars are watching them both. He falls asleep to a woman with the saddest voice he's ever heard singing about the past, radio static crackling in his ears. 

He wakes abruptly some time later. The static is gone, and so are the sad woman and the man with the voice Junmyeon loves. When he looks outside the stars are covered by deep grey stormclouds, and all he can hear is the rush of falling rain.

 

 

The storm breaks by morning. It leaves traces behind, though, condensation on the windowsills and a chill in the air. 

Junmyeon is at the stove when a muffled _mew_ comes from somewhere behind him. He jolts, his thumb slipping along the shell of the egg he's cracking. The yolk is broken when it drops into the pan, yellow spilling through white. He sighs, wipes his hands on a dishtowel and goes out to the living room. 

At the door to his balcony a little grey cat is staring up at him plaintively. She meows again, and Junmyeon laughs.

“Back again, are we?” He slides open the door and kneels down. The morning air is icy and there's water still dripping from the eaves. The cat bumps her damp little head against Junmyeon’s knuckles when he holds out his hand.

“Some storm last night, huh?” he says. She meows back loudly and starts licking one of her paws. “We probably won't get another one like that for the rest of the year.” Junmyeon rocks back on his heels and peers around. His apartment is on the fifth floor, and how the cat manages to make her way up here is still beyond him. The cat stares back at him with wide green eyes, and Junmyeon feels oddly condescended.

“Wait here,” he tells her, getting to his feet. “I think I have some cans of tuna in the cupboard.” He goes back into the kitchen and takes the eggs off the heat, then opens a can of tuna into a bowl. The cat is sitting at the balcony doorway when he walks into the living room, purring expectantly. Junmyeon laughs and puts the tuna in front of her, then sits cross legged at the coffee table and eats his own breakfast. 

Outside the morning is beginning to stir; the coffee shop across the road turns its sign to _Open_ and the hesitant sounds of traffic drift in from the main road a few blocks away. The cat finishes eating before Junmyeon and begins to lick urgently at her side. He takes both their bowls into the kitchen, washes and dries them, and when he glances back the cat has vanished.

Junmyeon leaves mid-morning, huddling deep into his coat. It'll be cold enough to snow soon. He wonders where stray cats go to keep warm when it snows.

It's a Wednesday and his shift doesn't start for another few hours, so he detours around the station he normally uses to get to work. The river isn't far from Junmyeon's apartment, less than a ten minute walk. At this time on a weekday, and in this weather, it's empty and silent but the occasional senior couple on their morning walk and the distant roar of traffic. Junmyeon takes the stairs down to the riverbank two at a time. The wind sweeping in off the water is drags icily against his face and through his hair, making him shiver. He pulls his hood up over his head and walks faster.

The bridge resolves itself in the distance, giant shapes of concrete and steel rising out of the water like a creature from a fairytale. Junmyeon blinks the stinging wind out of his eyes, and walks toward it. The sunlight today is pale and grey and provides little warmth, but it's still far colder when Junmyeon steps beneath the shadow of the bridge. A truck roars overhead, shaking the concrete and startling a pigeon pecking at the ground by Junmyeon's feet.

Facing the water is a huge concrete wall covered in a spectrum of graffiti, most of it meaningless scribble. Junmyeon crouches down at the bottom right corner of the wall. _Make a wish_ , it says, _there is magic here_. The words are a vibrant white, like it was painted yesterday. Junmyeon knows, though, that it's been here for many, many years.

He sits back against the wall and stares out over the river. The concrete columns supporting the bridge stretch out in front of him in two parallel lines, like they're coaxing him out onto the water. But Junmyeon just watches the river as it flows and flows and flows past him, and wonders if he could stop it if he tried.

 

 

Jongin appears like a ghost on Junmyeon’s doorstep at the end of February. His arms are folded over his chest, and he's shivering beneath his t-shirt.

“Hi,” he says, when Junmyeon opens the door. “I forgot what number apartment you were. I had to ring every doorbell on this floor.”

Junmyeon steps aside. “Five-twelve,” he says, and catches the distinct scents of salt and suntan lotion as Jongin passes him. “I’ve always been five-twelve.”

It’s almost a year since Jongin’s been in Seoul. Junmyeon has to pull his old rice cooker from the back of a cupboard, the one that sometimes switches off spontaneously and leaves the rice crunchy, because his new one only cooks one serving at a time.

Jongin watches him rinse it, head pillowed on his arms at the kitchen table. His skin is end-of-summer gold, and his hair is so stiff with salt that it stands up from his scalp.

“Let me guess,” says Junmyeon, setting the bowl aside on the drying rack. “Southern hemisphere?” 

Jongin grins. “Fiji.”

“Do they not have shampoo in Fiji?” Junmyeon asks mildly, drying his hands on a tea towel.

“Come on, it’s the tropics! No one cares whether you’ve washed your hair.” He tilts his head, looks at Junmyeon thoughtfully. “You should go sometime.”

“Maybe,” Junmyeon mutters, and then goes to his bedroom to find a spare blanket. Jongin follows at his heels like an obedient shadow. The clock in his living room chimes softly; midnight.

“You're sure you don't mind me staying?” asks Jongin, as Junmyeon stands on his toes to reach the blanket, folded on the topmost shelf of his wardrobe. “Because I can go to my sister’s. Or my parents’, I'm sure they’d--”

“You're always welcome here.” Junmyeon drops the blanket into Jongin’s arms. “As long as you're okay with the couch.” Jongin never used to worry that he was unwanted. Junmyeon wonders where he's been this past year that's taught him to doubt the places he thought he was safe. He turns out the light.

“Junmyeon?” asks Jongin, a silhouette in the doorway. “Is it gonna rain tomorrow?”

Junmyeon slides under the covers of his bed. “I don't know,” he mutters. “Google it.”

Jongin laughs softly. “I'd like it to rain, I think.”

“Go to sleep, Jongin,” Junmyeon mumbles, turning to face the wall. Jongin doesn't reply, and when Junmyeon sits up and looks to the doorway, Jongin's shadow is gone.

“Night!” Jongin calls from the living room. Junmyeon keeps staring at the empty doorway.

“Goodnight,” he calls back, looking to the radio on his windowsill for a few silent moments. He tries to swallow the strange feeling in his throat, then lowers himself back onto the pillow and stares up at the ceiling for a long time, eyes wide open in the dark.

 

 

 

Junmyeon doesn’t often dream, but when he does it’s always the same.

He’s in a boat, a tiny, wooden thing painted red, bobbing on the water like a child’s bath toy. When Junmyeon blinks away the wind and looks up, the sky is burnt edges of orange and scarlet. Whether it’s dawn or dusk, he doesn’t know.

On the bank upstream three tiny figures are standing, faces obscured in the half-light. They’re waving at him, and Junmyeon has the overwhelming feeling that he knows them, all of them. He wants to go back, but the current is pulling his little boat downstream, slow but inexorable.

It’s dusk, he realises then, as he drops to his knees and leans over the edge of the boat to push against the current with his palms. The sky is bruising shades of violet, and the water slipping between his fingers feels nothing like water at all; like smoke and sand and ice.

When he looks up again the figures on the shore are gone. Junmyeon sits back slowly on his heels, alone on the water as night falls all around him.

And then he wakes in his quiet, dawn-dark apartment with the oddest feeling that he’s drifting away and there’s nothing he can do about it.

 

 

Junmyeon wakes up to the sound of Jongin laughing. He doesn't have to look any farther than the window to find out why; there's a reluctant mist of rain floating down outside.

“Before you ask,” Junmyeon says as he walks out into the kitchen, “that wasn't me.”

Jongin is sitting at the table with his knees tucked to his chest. There's a bag of pastries in front of him and the smell is making Junmyeon's stomach growl. “Uh huh,” he says, grinning. “Sure it wasn't.”

“It really wasn't,” says Junmyeon weakly, dropping into a chair and taking a croissant from the bag. Jongin is still grinning at him, and Junmyeon sighs. “How'd you pay for these, anyway?” He takes a bite, then pauses mid-chew. “You _did_ pay for them, right?”

Jongin kicks haphazardly at Junmyeon's shin beneath the table. “Of course I did! Do I look like a lawbreaker to you?”

“Now you mention it--” Junmyeon begins, and Jongin tears off a piece of pastry and throws it at his face.

“Taemin gave me a card to his accounts,” Jongin says. “Said I might as well, since he has too much money and not enough time to spend it.” His hair is a little damp and hanging over his eyes. Junmyeon is reminded overwhelmingly of the little stray cat that sometimes drifts onto his balcony with the wind, when Junmyeon’s not looking. “He keeps leaving pamphlets for flight attendant schools all over the apartment.”

Junmyeon raises an eyebrow. “It's a good idea.” He stands and moves into the kitchen, switching on the coffee machine as he passes.

Jongin yawns, and rests his cheek on top of his knees. “I guess so. He and I could match up our schedules and hang out more, too, but I… Spending all that time at an academy, holding down a job, they're things that I just-- I can't see myself doing.” A crease appear between his eyebrows. “I haven't spent more than a month in one place since we graduated.”

Junmyeon turns his back to Jongin and closes his eyes. They're a lot alike, the two of them. The river at the heart of this city keeps on flowing, but Junmyeon can't escape it as easily as Jongin can. He exhales and opens his eyes.

“I have work this morning,” he says, taking a mug out of the cupboard. “You can come if you like, or you can hang out here.”

Jongin still has his eyes closed, head pillowed on his knees. He hums sleepily. “I might go back to bed,” he mumbles. “I'll come down later?” 

The coffee maker beeps, and Junmyeon shoves the mug under it just in time to catch the stream of coffee. “That's fine,” he says. “There's a spare coat hanging in my closet. It'll be a bit small, but…”

“Thanks.” Jongin’s eyes open, but he doesn't look at Junmyeon. “And can you… let my sisters know I'm here?” Junmyeon takes a sip of his coffee, then winces. Bitter.

“Of course,” he says, and Jongin’s eyes fall shut. A few moments later he's breathing heavily, half a blueberry muffin still in his hand. He's still there when Junmyeon, showered and dressed, leaves the apartment fifteen minutes later. The muffin has slipped out of his hand and rolled beneath the table. He slips his phone out of his pocket, checks the shutter sound is switched off, and then raises it and takes a photo, making sure to get the muffin in the shot.

On the subway Junmyeon brings up Jongin’s oldest sister’s contact on his phone. He sends her the photo of Jongin, with the caption _ur bro is in town_. 

The reply comes in before Junmyeon even reaches the next stop. She’s sent him three whole lines of party emojis. _Send the lil rascal over tomorrow night_ , comes through moments later. _We’re having a movie night with the kids!!_ Thirty seconds, then: _Harry Potter!!!!!_ accompanied by a row of lightning bolt emojis.

 _Will do_ , Junmyeon sends back, then after a moment of consideration, a single party emoticon of his own. He locks his phone and sits back in his seat. 

There was a time when Jongin didn't avoid Seoul like it was contagious; up until a few years ago he used to visit every other month. Junmyeon doesn’t know what happened exactly, only that Jongin appeared in his living room abruptly one evening when he’d been at dinner with his family, face blazing red and lips pressed into a pale line, and asked if he could stay at Junmyeon’s that night. They sat on the couch and watched Running Man reruns and both pretended not to notice that Jongin was crying softly into his sleeve. Two days later he disappeared in the middle of the night without a word. He left his phone on Junmyeon’s coffee table, perfectly, deliberately in the centre, and didn’t come back for it. Junmyeon still has it, tucked into the back of a desk drawer, battery long dead.

When he asked, Jongin’s eldest sister told him he’d had an argument with their parents.

“Well, not really an argument, that implies he fought back. He kind of just sat there and took it.” She sighed, a rush of static over the phone. “It was pretty awful to watch.”

Junmyeon closed his eyes for a brief moment. “What was it about?”

Jongin’s sister was silent, then, hesitantly, “They… They don’t understand him. With my baby on the way, they’re just worried…”

Junmyeon had understood what she wouldn’t say; Jongin’s parents were afraid of him. He came back to Seoul half a year later, and stayed with Junmyeon. His sisters had welcomed him back with open arms, but his parents refused to see him. And so, he left and didn’t come back for six months, twelve, eighteen, and even now when he always turns up sometime in the spring, it’s with a vague sadness hovering over him like the lingering chill of winter.

Of the four of them, the four best friends born and raised in Seoul, Junmyeon realises, he’s the only one that still calls this city home. That thought makes him feel like Jongin looked when he met his niece for the first time, her chubby fist wrapped around one of his fingers, the most profoundly bittersweet look on his face. It makes him want to run through these streets as fast as he can, just to feel like he’s actually going somewhere, or to walk into Han river park and get so lost that he puts down roots and becomes one of the trees, unchanging until the end of time. But mostly, it just makes him feel like it could rain and rain and rain, like there could be a record-breaking week of storms in the middle of the dry season.

 

 

The door is unlocked and the lights are on when Junmyeon arrives, though the sign behind the glass is still turned to _Closed_. Junmyeon checks his watch; ten minutes to nine. The bell tinkles merrily when Junmyeon pushes the door open and steps inside.

“Morning,” comes from the vicinity of the new Avengers display, as Junmyeon shrugs his coat off. He squints, and then Soojung’s head pops up from behind a wall of Iron Man figurines. “Cold today, isn’t it?” Soojung’s on her knees, building an elaborate pyramid of plastic Hulk fists.

“I suppose it is, for spring,” says Junmyeon, unwinding his scarf as he goes out to the staff room. When he comes back out, wearing his work polo and lanyard, Soojung has finished the display and is back behind the register. Her hair is still untied and the ends are skimming the counter. 

Junmyeon rounds the register and stands beside her. She’s leaning over a textbook, mouthing words silently to herself. “Oppa,” she says, without looking up, “I need to leave half an hour early today to meet with my advisor. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Junmyeon says, scanning his ID and logging in to the computer.

Soojung looks up then, a vague smile on her face. “You’re far too accommodating. Has anyone ever told you that?”

Jongdae, his cheek resting against the inside of Junmyeon’s bare thigh, his eyelashes damp and so, so dark. “Tell me what you want,” he whispered, voice deep and dark and rough. “No need to be so accommodating.”

Junmyeon coughs into his fist. “Once or twice, maybe.” Soojung laughs, and Junmyeon wonders, not for the first time, if majoring in neuroscience really did somehow give her the ability to read minds. "I only accommodate you because you're my favourite." 

"I know," she says, and Junmyeon thinks he hears something like regret in her voice. When he looks over, though, she's already turned away, dragging her fingers through her hair and pulling it back into a ponytail. She ties it with the elastic around her wrist.

Baekhyun used to keep an elastic around his wrist during his experimentations with long hair in middle school. More often than not he'd let his hair hang loose around his shoulders and keep the elastic on him as a weapon. Junmyeon sported red marks on his arms from being hit with a hair elastic flicked from a distance for the entire summer he was fourteen.

"Uh oh," Soojung says, and when Junmyeon looks up she's staring straight back at him. "That look on your face. Is it that time of year already?"

"What?" says Junmyeon. "I don't have a look on my face."

Soojung laughs. "Oh yes, you do. It's _that_ look. Every year, in the springtime, there's a few weeks where you just..." Soojung shakes her head once, sharply. Her ponytail swings around and hits her cheek. "I don't know how to describe it. Every year, like clockwork."

"I..." Junmyeon swallows hard. "My friend from out of town is staying with me. He comes every spring."

Soojung makes a soft _ah_ of understanding. She's looking down at her textbook rather than at him. It makes it much easier for Junmyeon to admit things to her. He wonders if she's doing it on purpose. "It's complicated between you guys?"

Junmyeon scrolls through the transaction history on the computer with deliberate idleness. "Something like that." 

Soojung flips her textbook shut with an abrupt _thwack_. "It's nine," she says. "We should open. Where are you rostered?"

Junmyeon brings up the schedule on the computer. "Floor," he says, and Soojung clicks her tongue. 

"I'm on register," she says, putting her textbook back in her backpack. "Switch with me."

The store is always quiet weekday mornings. Register is the easiest position in the rotation.

"Are you sure?" Junmyeon asks, and Soojung rolls her eyes.

"Of course," she sing-songs, in a voice that Junmyeon thinks is meant to be him. "The world won’t end if you let people do nice things for you every now and then." Soojung once told him that she grew up in America. He can still hear traces of it when she speaks, sometimes.

Jongin turns up just after one, the bell sounding above his head as he pushes through the door. Soojung’s already left to get to her meeting, throwing Junmyeon a significant look on her way out and telling him to “look after himself”. The new kid, a first-year in university with pastel hair and a questionable work ethic, has taken her place. Jongin walks up to the counter, a good inch or two of wrist exposed past the sleeves of Junmyeon’s old coat. 

Junmyeon nods at him briefly over the shoulder of the woman he’s ringing up at the counter. Jongin waves back and strolls idly around the shop. She leaves a minute later, and Jongin comes up to the counter. He’s wearing one of the Hulk fists from Soojung’s display.

“Boy, am I glad to see you,” Jongin says. “You’ll never guess what I just did.”

“If you burned my building down then you’re finding us somewhere else to live,” Junmyeon warns. “I haven’t taken my lunch break yet, let’s go together. Sehun,” he calls toward the back of the store, where they keep the display consoles. The sounds of video game combat pause.

Sehun’s head pops out from behind a shelf a moment later. “Yeah?”

“I’m taking my lunch now, can you cover the counter? Joohyun’s doing a stocktake out back if it gets busy.”

Sehun looks highly disturbed by the prospect of actual work. “I guess I could,” he says slowly.

“Great, thanks,” Junmyeon says, a little dryly. He goes out to the staffroom to get his coat. “Alright, hit me. What have you done?” He takes off his lanyard and pulls his coat on over his work shirt.

“You remember the bakery you used to work at?” Jongin swings his fist toward the doorframe, stopping at the last moment. The Hulk fist makes an electronic crashing sound. “The one near Jongdae’s house?” 

Junmyeon frowns as he takes his scarf and walks back out to the store, Jongin falling into step beside him. “I remember, why?”

Jongin has a strange little smile on his face. “I went there accidentally. I thought you still worked there, for some reason.” He tries to laugh. “I sat there for almost an hour before I remembered you worked here. That you’d been working here for like, five years and it seemed impossible that I’d forgotten once I did remember, but for a while there I really...” He slips his hand out of the plastic fist and places it carefully back on the stack, then turns to Junmyeon. “People forget things all the time, though. Maybe I should start doing brain training. Like, sudoku or something.”

Junmyeon watches as Jongin turns away and walks toward the door. “I don't know about sudoku, but we have those Leapfrog tablets. You know, the ones with the alphabet and the numbers and--”

Jongin takes a tennis ball from a huge tub of them by the door and pelts it at Junmyeon. He catches it just before it hits his face, laughing. “Shut up,” Jongin groans. “Let's just go eat.”

Junmyeon drops the ball back into the tub as he follows out into the cold. Jongin is looking out across the street as they begin to walk, his hands stuffed deep into his coat pockets to keep them warm. In that brief moment of quiet, Junmyeon thinks about the seasons and the river and rain, about forgetfulness and a little grey cat and a voice on the radio, and has this vague, unsettling feeling, like he's been handed pieces to a puzzle but hasn't been shown the finished picture.

 

 

The next evening Jongin leaves to go to his sister’s just as the sun sets. Junmyeon means to order in some food and spend the night on the couch, maybe finally email Baekhyun back, but instead the night settles in and Junmyeon finds himself under the bridge by the river.

The water at night is invisible but for the occasional shiver of reflected light on the surface. Junmyeon feels very odd, like the cold edge in the air isn’t coming from the lingering winter, but from somewhere inside him. Maybe Soojung was more right than Junmyeon would like to admit.

A shadow to his right makes Junmyeon jump. He drops the streams of water that he’d been idly twisting in the air above him. They splash onto the concrete, and Junmyeon jumps to his feet to avoid getting soaked with frigid water.

“Oh.” The shadow resolves itself into Jongin. “Sorry, did I scare you?”

“No, no it's alright,” Junmyeon sighs, trying to rub some heat back into his frozen legs. “Why are you here? Aren't you meant to be at your sister’s tonight?”

“I was, but we already--” Jongin tilts his head. “It's almost midnight, Junmyeon. Have you even eaten?”

Junmyeon shrugs. “Wasn't very hungry.” He shakes his head sharply to clear away the fog.

“When I went back to your place and you weren't there, I had the weirdest feeling you'd be here instead,” Jongin says. “Come on, let's go eat.”

In a convenience store a few blocks away Junmyeon breathes in the stream of his cup ramen. Next to him, Jongin is aggressively stirring the seasoning into the noodles with his chopsticks. The cheap fluorescents glare down them. Jongin used to get terrible acne in high school, Junmyeon can still see the scars across his cheeks in this light. Junmyeon’s skin was always pretty clear, but it makes him wonder what scars he might have instead.

 

 

 

Junmyeon is closing the store on the sixth night of Jongin’s visit. The night outside is dark and endless, but the lights inside are all on. Rain right now would be beautiful, Junmyeon thinks. Tiny prisms of light clinging to the windows and reflecting colour on the black streets. The smell of wet concrete, of crushed pine and cold. The only rain tonight will come from the clouds, though. If Jongin asked then maybe, but Junmyeon is tired of having to make his own beauty.

Jongin has crawled into the giant ball pit in the centre of the store, and Junmyeon can only see his eyes and the top of his head. He watches Junmyeon as he closes the transactions at the counter, moves around locking up the displays.

“Junmyeon?” he says. His eyes look so very dark like this, the deepest black against a sea of primary colour.

Junmyeon stretches his arms overhead until the vertebrae in his back pop loudly. “Yeah?”

“Why do you work here? I mean, why here, of all places?” The circles under Jongin's eyes look darker like this too. Junmyeon wishes it didn't exhaust Jongin to be here, with him.

“Because it's fun,” Junmyeon says. “I like toys. I like kids. I was going to be a teacher, but since that didn't…” He slams the cash draw into the register and locks it with the key on his lanyard. “Isn't this the next best thing?”

“Then why do you look so… sad.” Jongin hasn't stopped staring at him. He’s one of Junmyeon’s oldest friends, but for some reason right now, Junmyeon can't bring himself to look back.

“I don’t know,” says Junmyeon, which is mostly a lie, but he thinks they both probably know anyway, even though Junmyeon's never admitted anything like it, not even to himself. There’s nothing that scares him more than the idea of leaving Seoul. Except maybe going back to university, or dating. He’s stuck in a city, in a past and in a moment of being that no longer exists. Sometimes, working here feels like he’s getting a little of that back.

“I was serious when I said you should travel,” says Jongin quietly. “I think Jongdae would like it if you visited. Almaty is nice.”

Junmyeon smiles faintly. “I don’t think he wants to see me, Jongin. Plus, it’s too dangerous.”

“Not for one night, it wouldn’t be. He would never say it, but… Just, I think it’d be good for both of you.” Jongin chews his lip. “I hear France is nice this time of year, too.”

Junmyeon laughs. “Is that so?” Jongin is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. “You two still haven’t made up?” Jongin shakes his head, looking miserable. “Well, I guess I could go over and kick some sense into him.”

Jongin nods solemnly. “Please.” He looks over his shoulder toward the back of the store. “Can we play Mario Kart?”

Junmyeon looks at the clock. “Yeah, why not,” he says, stepping out from behind the counter. Jongin disappears, the balls rolling into the empty space he’s left. A few moments later the main menu music is playing from behind the shelves.

With Jongin next to him, cheating so hard it should be criminal, and the familiar, automated sounds of the game chirping throughout the store as the night deepens outside the windows, Junmyeon can almost pretend that he’s still seventeen and he has his entire life and all its endless potential stretching out ahead of him.

 

 

Jongin leaves in the night.

It’s not as if Junmyeon didn’t know it was coming. When Jongin started idly pacing the kitchen, started sleeping more and eating less, Junmyeon knew that he’d be gone with the next strong breeze, when Junmyeon had his back turned.

As he lies in bed that night, listening to silence, his high school physics lessons spring to mind. Something about a box, and a cat that was both alive and dead at the same time until someone opened the box to check. If Junmyeon stays in the bedroom, never goes out to see if Jongin is really gone, then he’s both here and not here. If Junmyeon never leaves, then neither can Jongin.

He does, though. It’s still dark outside, and the blanket is folded neatly on the arm of the couch. The cushions are cold against his legs when Junmyeon sits down. Seoul is sleepy and familiar outside, and, not for the first time, Junmyeon feels completely and utterly trapped. Maybe it was him that was Schrodinger’s cat all this time, not Jongin. Locked in a tiny box, not alive and not dead.

He glances up at his wall clock; ten past five, then reaches forward and grabs his laptop from the coffee table, balancing it across his knees. It’s just past ten in the evening in France right now. Junmyeon composes a new email.

 _Baek_ , it begins. _It’s been a while. How do you feel about a visitor?_

 

 

Soojung’s hair is a vibrant crimson when Junmyeon next sees her. It clashes horrifically with the dark blue of her work polo.

“That’s certainly eye-catching,” says Junmyeon, as he walks up to her.

She looks up from the video games she’s shelving, and smiles when she sees him. “That’s kind of what I was going for.” She glances at his jeans and t-shirt and tilts her head. “You’re not working today?”

Junmyeon idly traces a fingertip across the spines of the DVDs on the shelf beside him. “Nope. Just came to say bye.” His finger pauses on _Peter Pan_ , the old, animated version. Jongin cried when Wendy left Neverland and didn’t come back. Junmyeon had thought, privately, that it might not have been so bad to be Peter. “I’m flying out tonight.”

“Oh,” Soojung says, “that’s… I didn’t realise you were the travelling type. That’s great, where are you going?”

“Lyon,” says Junmyeon. “To start with, at least. It’s kind of an open itinerary after that.” He laughs a little. “This was all kind of sudden.”

“I can see that,” Soojung says. It’s sunny today. The light streaming in through the shopfront is catching on her hair, making it glow. “When’s the flight?”

“I have to be at the airport in,” Junmyeon checks his watch, “four hours.”

Soojung bites her lip. If Junmyeon didn’t know better, he’d think she was nervous. He does know better, though, and Jung Soojung isn’t the type of girl to get nervous. She always knows exactly what she wants. Junmyeon’s mother, who still sets his place with university pamphlets whenever Junmyeon goes over for dinner, whispering _it’s not too late_ across the table, would probably love her.

“Sometimes,” she says finally, “I can’t work out whether you’re very oblivious or very observant and pretending not to be.”

Junmyeon tilts his head. “How do you mean?”

“Like that,” Soojung says, pointing at him. “That’s exactly what I mean.” Junmyeon is confused. Or maybe he understands perfectly, but is pretending he doesn’t. He’s not entirely sure, anymore. “My shift ends in half an hour,” she says, very slowly, like she’s making sure Junmyeon hears everything she’s trying to say. “If you have the time, and if you want to, we can get lunch together after.”

“I...” Junmyeon is not very sure of anything right now. Soojung tends to make him feel that way. “I don’t know if that’s the best idea,” he says slowly. “There are things about me that you don’t know.”

“I could know though, Oppa.” The light is in her eyes now. Junmyeon has his camera on him, for the trip. He wishes he could take a photo. “I would, if only you’d tell me.”

If Junmyeon is very honest with himself, which he rarely is, it’s more than Soojung not knowing that sometimes he makes it rain when he’s feeling sad. Soojung… Soojung is beautiful, and smart, and kind and funny. She wants to be a neuroscientist and has an English name she actually uses and dyes her hair the colour of fire just because she feels like it. Junmyeon is twenty-seven years old and works at a toy store and might still be a little bit in love with one of his best friends. The thought of being with her scares him as much as the idea of getting on a plane out of Seoul and never coming back.

And she knows all this. She knows, because she can see it playing out on Junmyeon’s face, and he’s been told he’s hard to read but Soojung can do it better than anyone in this city. It’s breaking her heart. Junmyeon can see that much, at least. Junmyeon feels a dull, aching sympathy in his chest, because he knows that, if the circumstances had been different, if Junmyeon had been different, they could’ve fallen deeply, madly in love.

“I’m sorry,” says Junmyeon, and Soojung shakes her head.

“Don't be,” she says. She’s not crying, but she looks like she wants to. “It’s just lunch. Maybe I’ll see if I can drag Sehun along with me.” She hesitates for a moment, then steps forward onto her toes and kisses him on the cheek. Another American thing, Junmyeon thinks. “Have a safe trip, Oppa.”

Six hours later, on a Boeing rising toward the setting sun like a giant aluminium phoenix, Junmyeon watches Seoul grow smaller and smaller beneath him, and wonders if it’ll look the same to him, when he next sees it.

 

 

Baekhyun is wearing shades when he meets Junmyeon at the gate. It’s nine in the evening. He looks like a dickhead.

“You look like a dickhead,” Junmyeon says. Baekhyun throws his head back and laughs, then pulls Junmyeon into a crushing hug.

“At least I only look it,” he says into Junmyeon’s shoulder. “What kind of person waits five years to come and visit his best friend on the other side of the world?” He pulls back and lowers his shades on his nose so he can give Junmyeon a solemn look. “A dickhead, that’s who.”

Junmyeon shoves him away. Baekhyun staggers back and clutches his heart like he’s been shot. Junmyeon might have missed him.

Baekhyun’s apartment is in the city centre. It’s a little bigger than Junmyeon’s, and a lot nicer. From the floor to ceiling windows in his living room, the lights of Lyon don’t look all that different from Seoul’s.

“Nice place,” Junmyeon says. Baekhyun pulls off his shades and falls back onto the couch.

“Perks of being a B-list local celebrity,” he says, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. The whites are bloodshot and angry.

Junmyeon flops down beside him. “Big night last night?”

Baekhyun laughs a little, his head lolling to the side. “You could say that.” He swings his head around so he can look at Junmyeon. “You hungry?”

“Not really.” He yawns, then smiles apologetically. “Just tired.” It’s about four in the morning Seoul time, and Junmyeon didn’t sleep on the plane.

“I’ll leave you to it, then.” He nods toward a door on the other side of the room. “Bathroom’s in there if you wanna shower. The spare bedroom across the hall is all made up.”

It’s probably fortunate that Junmyeon’s so exhausted-- he imagines he could’ve spent a long time lying awake and listening to the distant melody of foreign traffic if he hadn’t been. Instead, though, he falls asleep quickly and deeply, only waking briefly around dawn to the sound of a door slamming open, heavy footsteps, a muffled crash, a few choice swear words. But then he’s back asleep so quickly that in the morning he wonders if he imagined that too.

 

 

Baekhyun’s bedroom door is shut when Junmyeon wakes up and ventures out into the apartment. He showers and dresses and makes himself a coffee in Baekhyun’s kitchen, but the man himself still doesn’t emerge. There are a few crumpled Euro bills and an apartment key on the kitchen counter, so Junmyeon takes them, slips on his shoes and takes the lift down to the ground-level.

Jongin was right; France is beautiful this time of year. It’s sunny, if a bit cold, and the old buildings and winding streets look like something off a postcard as they soak in the sunlight. Junmyeon muddles through buying himself breakfast at a bakery with some vague English and a lot of pointing. 

There are two rivers running through the centre of Lyon, meeting on the southern side of the city. It reminds Junmyeon of home. He wonders if that’s why Baekhyun chose it.

Junmyeon starts to get hungry again sometime in the afternoon. He ran out of money buying an interesting-looking drink that tasted like approximately fifty oranges condensed into a single can, so he heads back to Baekhyun's apartment. He's awake and at the kitchen table when Junmyeon unlocks the door and lets himself in.

“Hey,” says Junmyeon, kicking off his shoes.

Baekhyun raises his head from where it's resting on the table. “Hey,” he echoes blearily. There's a cup of coffee next to him, steam twisting up into the bright afternoon sunlight. “Had a good morning?”

“Yeah, just had a look around the area.” Junmyeon sits down opposite him. “Late night last night?”

Baekhyun lets his head flop back down to rest on the table, laughing a little. “Yeah,” he says, eyes closed. “A few friends messaged me after you went to bed asking if I was free, so-- I hope you don't mind?”

“Not at all,” Junmyeon says. “It's your house, don't feel obliged to do anything on my account.”

“Ah, Junmyeon,” Baekhyun sighs wistfully. “Always so accommodating.”

Soojung, sun in her eyes and fire in her hair and-- Jongdae staring up at him, face pale in the darkness and lips so, so red. Junmyeon shakes his head sharply. 

“Anyway,” Baekhyun continues, “we went out and-- well, I got back pretty late.” He laughs again, into the tablecloth. “Sorry, I'm being kind of a shitty host.” His voice is a rough mess, like he's been singing at the top of his lungs for two days straight which, incidentally, did happen one summer break. Baekhyun's dad had been made redundant and Baekbeom was away doing military service and-- Baekhyun spent a lot of time at Junmyeon's that summer.

“Don't worry,” Junmyeon says, reaching over and patting his wrist. “I've known you for a long time, I didn't have very high expectations. I'm just glad to have a roof over my head.” Baekhyun kicks out at Junmyeon's leg beneath the table. Jongin did the exact same thing, just over a week ago in Junmyeon's kitchen. He’ll have to bring that up, eventually, but not right now.

“I'm going to work in a couple hours.” Baekhyun tips his head back and drains the rest of his coffee. He places the mug back down, wincing, though whether at the bitterness or the heat, Junmyeon can't tell. “I host a radio show, did you know that?”

“I think Jongdae mentioned it,” Junmyeon says, like he hadn’t bought a shortwave radio just so he could listen to it from overseas.

Baekhyun pushes himself up from the table and makes his way slowly around the kitchen counter, dumping his mug in the sink. “You can come to the station if you like. It's not hugely interesting, but I'll be done in time for a late dinner.”

“That sounds nice,” Junmyeon says, which is how he ends up sitting in the corner of Baekhyun’s studio, watching him talk into a microphone for an hour like he's been doing it his whole life. Baekhyun’s French is familiar to him by now, but the way his mouth looks shaping the words, how the syllables roll so fluidly off his tongue, is new. Junmyeon wishes he'd taken French in high school so he might have some idea what Baekhyun's saying, so that the space between them might not feel wider than it did when they were still on different continents.

They go to a Korean restaurant for dinner, which Junmyeon finds ironic to no end. Baekhyun insists, though, because he's craving barbecue, and Junmyeon doesn't mind since he has another week and a half to eat all the French food he wants.

“Let's go to a bar,” Baekhyun says, as they step out of the restaurant and into the cool night. “I know a good one near here.”

The bar is more of a club by Junmyeon's standards, but maybe he just doesn’t go out enough. Baekhyun knows the security guard, and the bartender, and after a couple of drinks his rapid-fire French sounds more like music than talking.

“Do you still sing?” Junmyeon asks him, tasting beer on the back of his tongue. Baekhyun's gone straight for shots. He throws one back and winces, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“Not really,” he says. He's not looking at Junmyeon, and his Korean has a strange, lilting edge from the French he was just speaking.

An hour later and Baekhyun drags Junmyeon out onto the dance floor. Baekhyun's had three drinks to every one of Junmyeon's, and he's unsteady and searing hot as he sways to the music beside Junmyeon.

It might not be the best time or place, but Junmyeon's a little bit drunk and a little less careful, so he leans in close and shouts, “Baek, do you know why I came?”

Baekhyun looks at him for a moment, then his eyes widen and he looks down at Junmyeon's crotch. “Jesus christ, Junmyeon. What is _wrong_ with you?”

“No! God, _no_ ,” he grabs Baekhyun's shoulder to get his attention away from his crotch and back to his face. “I mean, why I came here. Do you know why I came to visit you?”

“Oh,” Baekhyun stares at him blankly. Junmyeon can hardly hear him over the throbbing music. “Why?”

“Because Jongin told me to,” Junmyeon says, watching Baekhyun very closely.

“Oh,” he says. “ _Oh_.” An odd expression passes over his face, and then he turns and stumbles away from Junmyeon, toward the club’s main door. Junmyeon follows, weaving through the crush of the dance floor.

When Junmyeon makes it outside, Baekhyun’s already leaning against the outside wall, a lit cigarette dangling between his fingers. He gestures with it weakly when he sees Junmyeon staring at it. “Bad habit,” he murmurs.

 _It's bad for your voice_ , Junmyeon wants to say, even though Baekhyun just told him he doesn't sing anymore. It seems such a waste. Junmyeon has never heard another voice quite like Baekhyun's.

“What happened?” he asks instead. Baekhyun sighs, and his breath curls up into the darkness, more smoke than air. “With you and Jongin,” he adds, though they both already know what he meant.

“I was angry,” says Baekhyun. He looks as excruciatingly sober as Junmyeon feels right now. “I said things I shouldn't have, and then it felt too late to take them back.”

“Angry at Jongin?” Junmyeon asks, and Baekhyun shakes his head.

“No, no, not at him.” He stares down at the lit butt of his cigarette. “I was jealous of him.”

Junmyeon walks over to lean on the wall beside him. His footfalls on the pavement are loud in the stark quiet. “Jealous? Why?”

Baekhyun tilts his head back against the concrete to look at Junmyeon. “You know why.” His eyes are soft beneath his sweaty bangs. “We’re a bit the same, you and I. You feel it too, the jealousy. I can tell.” He stares straight ahead again, out into the dark. “It'd be nice to be able to run away from my problems, once in a while.”

“I…” Junmyeon had the exact same thought, not even a week ago. It's unnerving, to be read this easily by someone who isn't Soojung. “I don't think it's that simple for Jongin, either.”

“Probably not,” says Baekhyun. Junmyeon can taste the smoke on him. “But since when was jealousy rational?” He taps some ash off his cigarette. It drifts, glowing, to their feet, and Junmyeon scuffs it into the concrete with the toe of his shoe. 

“I don't understand, though,” he says. “What problems are you running away from?”

Baekhyun tips his head back against the wall, the saddest little smile on his face Junmyeon thinks he's ever seen. “That's a story for another time.” He drops his cigarette and grinds it out with his heel. “Come on, let's go back inside. We’re meant to be having fun!”

Inside, the strobe lights catch on Baekhyun’s face, an ever changing flicker of magenta and blue and lime green dancing across the shadow of his face. Junmyeon remembers a time when Baekhyun was brighter than every star in the night sky, and wonders where all that light has gone. He wonders if Baekhyun dropped it somewhere between Seoul and Lyon, and whether Junmyeon could retrace his path and find it for him.

 

 

It's cloudy on Junmyeon’s fifth day in Lyon. His curtains are closed, but he can tell from the way the water feels in the sky. Baekhyun is already up, Junmyeon can hear him moving around in the kitchen. He's leaning over the stove when Junmyeon comes out of the bedroom. The floors here aren't heated, and the soles of his feet are cold against the tiles. He sits down at the table and rolls his neck.

Baekhyun glances over his shoulder. “Ah, hey,” he says. “I'm making breakfast.” He holds up a spatula for Junmyeon to see. “Crêpes. A girlfriend’s recipe, for the authentic French experience.”

Junmyeon pulls his feet up onto the chair to sit cross-legged. “Girlfriend?”

Baekhyun steps back from the stove. “Ex-girlfriend. Check this out.” He jerks the frypan so the crêpe flips in an arc and lands back in the pan. He spreads his arms out like he's expecting applause, and Junmyeon obliges him. “I'm glad that actually worked. Usually it ends up on the floor.” He turns his back to Junmyeon and puts the pan back on the stove. “She was an actress. The breakup was… messy. Very public, too.” He turns around to face Junmyeon and leans his back against the counter. “But I got an awesome crêpe recipe out of it.”

In the cold light of morning Baekhyun looks very pale, like he's a ghost rather than made of smoke, or shadow. Either way, he never seems like he’s quite here.

“What did you wish for?” asks Junmyeon. “When we were sixteen, under that bridge.”

Baekhyun goes very still. “I…” He pushes off the counter abruptly and goes to the fridge, pulling the door open. Junmyeon can only see his hand on the handle and the curve of his shoulder. “I wished to be fearless.”

Junmyeon shivers. He’s always felt the cold a lot more than Baekhyun. “Did it work?”

Baekhyun places a bottle of orange juice on the counter and then moves to the cabinet to get glasses. He never could keep still for very long. “At first, yeah. You remember my thing about the dark?”

Junmyeon does. Once, Baekhyun ran out into a busy intersection to save a stray dog that’d gotten caught in the middle. Junmyeon thought he wasn’t afraid of anything, until there was a power outage in Jongdae’s apartment one night, in the days before mobile phone flashlights, and they couldn’t find any torches or candles. That was the first time he ever saw Baekhyun cry, but not the last.

Junmyeon also remembers the first time he saw Baekhyun light up like one of Hongdae’s neon lights. Another moment he wishes he’d taken a photo of, like Soojung on the day he left, or Jongdae with eyes as dark as night.

“So that solved that fear, but…” Baekhyun slams the glasses down on the counter so hard that Junmyeon is afraid they might shatter. His knuckles are white. “Did you know, that visible light only accounts for a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum?”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with--”

“A ten-thousandth of a centimeter. That’s how big the wavelength of visible light is, did you know that? I didn’t either, until Jongdae told me.” Junmyeon has an awful, awful feeling in the pit of his stomach, like he’s on a rollercoaster, right at the top of the first drop. “You know what kind of radiation occurs when the wavelength is a centimeter long?” Baekhyun has both hands braced on the counter. His shoulders are trembling. “Microwave radiation. And when it’s ten-billionths of a centimeter?” Baekhyun’s voice drops to a whisper. “Nuclear radiation.”

“Baek,” Junmyeon murmurs, but Baekhyun doesn’t seem to have heard him.

“An awful lot of room for error, if you ask me,” he whispers. And then Junmyeon’s struck with a memory, one he doesn’t like to think about often. His mother, in his final year of high school, coming into his bedroom in the morning, the house phone in her hand. Jongdae had slept over that night, and was on a fold-out mattress on the floor beside the bed.

“Boys,” she said, sitting on the edge of Junmyeon’s bed. “That was Baekhyun’s aunt on the phone. His father...” Junmyeon remembers looking over at Jongdae, remembers seeing his own panic mirrored back at him in Jongdae’s face. “He passed away last night, in hospital.”

Jongdae went very still. “But I don’t understand,” Junmyeon said. “He wasn’t old, or sick, or…”

Junmyeon’s mother frowned. “They… they’re not sure how or why, but the doctors think the cause of death was ARS. Acute Radiation Syndrome.”

Junmyeon was already looking at Jongdae, so he saw all the colour drain from his face. Now Junmyeon realises that, even then, Jongdae had known the price Baekhyun was paying to be fearless, before Baekhyun even realised himself.

“My father was a piece of shit, but I--” Baekhyun shudders, hard. “I never meant to…”

And suddenly it makes sense, why Baekhyun applied for an internship on the other side of the world, away from everyone he knew and loved. Another thing that falls into place-- they’d found out early on that alcohol suppressed their abilities, and Baekhyun hasn’t stopped drinking all week.

“Oh, Baek,” Junmyeon whispers. He stands up and moves around the counter to where Baekhyun is, and rests a hand on the curve of his shoulder. It heaves up and down as Baekhyun takes a deep breath, then looks up at Junmyeon.

“That’s an old story, though, and a sad one.” He straightens up and goes over to the hotplate. The crepe has burned, smoke curling up into the rangehood. Baekhyun slides it into the bin and pours a new batch of batter onto the pan. “Tell me, what did you wish for?”

Junmyeon doesn’t think it’d be right, after what Baekhyun’s just told him, to tell the truth. So instead he just says, “I wished I could make the river stop flowing,” and leaves it at that.

 

 

The truth, though, is this.

As Junmyeon was sitting there beneath the bridge, watching the river, his three best friends around him, he had a moment of profound awareness that only usually comes with retrospect; he wanted to stay like this, with them, forever.

And then Baekhyun found a little line of white graffiti in the corner of the wall, one telling them to make a wish, and Jongin said, “Well, there’s no harm in trying. We might as well.”

So Junmyeon had made a wish, one he still can’t quite put into words, but the river had been flowing and flowing and he wished it would stop, because he could almost feel this moment slipping between his fingers like so much water.

And now, at the age of twenty-seven, when he can’t seem to grow up no matter how hard he tries, he thinks it all leads back to that one moment when he was sixteen and made a wish, a promise, without thinking what it would mean to keep it.

 

 

They stay in on Friday night and watch a movie that’s showing on TV. There are no subtitles, but Baekhyun translates the important parts, and the cinematography is nice enough that Junmyeon doesn’t really mind having only a vague understanding of the plot.

Baekhyun falls asleep with five minutes to go, his head resting on the arm of the couch. Junmyeon doesn’t get to find out what happens in the end. He can download it with subtitles when he gets back to Seoul and watch it properly, but then again maybe he won’t. Maybe he’d prefer to remember it unfinished, with Baekhyun’s patchy translations filling in the gaps.

Junmyeon goes into Baekhyun's bedroom and takes the blanket off his bed. Baekhyun calls out something to him from the other room, and Junmyeon pauses. “What was that, Baek?” he calls back, but Baekhyun doesn’t reply.

He walks back out, but everything is as he left it, and Baekhyun is still fast asleep on the couch. There’s an advertisement playing on the TV, for health insurance or something. Junmyeon was certain the voice he heard was Baekhyun’s, but he’s almost convinced himself it was the television when Baekhyun speaks again.

“ _N’éteins pas la lumière_ ,” he murmurs, frowning, then rolls over to press his face into the back of the couch. He’s still fast asleep.

Junmyeon has to stand there for a moment, absorbing that. Baekhyun dreams in French. That… That’s… 

Junmyeon drapes the blanket over Baekhyun, tucking it in around his feet and shoulders because he’s always had a tendency to wriggle in his sleep. He goes into his own room and takes the blanket off the bed, and the pillow, and drops them both on the carpet beside the couch where Baekhyun’s sleeping. Junmyeon lowers himself down to rest his head on the pillow, and pulls the blanket over himself.

Baekhyun’s living room is carpeted, at least, and it’s no more uncomfortable than the sleepovers they used to have as kids. Plus, it’s almost March now, and the warmth of spring hovers over him gently.

Junmyeon realises, when he takes the remote from the coffee table and switches off the TV, that the reading lamp is still on, a soft glow in the corner of the room. He almost gets up to turn it off, but then changes his mind abruptly and rolls over. Baekhyun’s soft breathing is a constant above him, but he doesn’t sleeptalk again, and if he does then Junmyeon’s not awake to hear it.

 

 

Before Junmyeon knows it, it’s his last night in Lyon. Baekhyun’s on his way home from work, and they’re going to dinner, and then to see an Opera afterwards. 

Junmyeon’s brushing his teeth when, without warning, all the lights go out. He freezes for a moment, then laughs a little. He spits out his toothpaste and rinses his mouth as best as he can in the pitch dark, and then his phone rings from the bedroom and he has an awful, stomach-dropping realisation: Baekhyun.

He runs out of the bathroom, slamming his shoulder hard into the opposite wall of the corridor misjudging the distance. The phone stops ringing just as he trips over a chair, and starts again when he makes it to the bedroom. The phone is glowing, face-down on the bed, and Junmyeon seizes it with both hands and puts it to his ear.

“Junmyeon,” Baekhyun says. His voice is shaking. “Junmyeon, all the streetlights just went out and I--”

“I know,” Junmyeon says. “Baek, where are you? I’m coming to get you.”

A faint _beep_ sounds from the other end of the line. A pause, and then, “Oh fuck, fuck, my phone’s almost dead. Junmyeon, I can’t-- there’s no one around and I can’t see _anything_ , oh god--”

Junmyeon is already running toward the door and fumbling to find his shoes in the dark. “Baekhyun, listen. You need to tell me where you are.”

“Near the station, but I took some backstreets and-- I don’t know, I don’t…” Baekhyun breathes in sharply. “Junmyeon, I think there’s someone--” Baekhyun swears, and then, there’s the sound of heavy footfalls, of running on cobbled streets.

“Baekhyun?” Junmyeon runs out into the hall and presses the button for the elevator, waits for a split second and then remembers the power’s out. “Baekhyun, stay where you are.” He shoves the stairwell door open and takes them two at a time, squinting down at his feet so he won’t break an ankle tripping in the dark.

“Jun, I--” Baekhyun’s breathing hard, like he’s been running sprints. “I’m so fucking scared.”

Junmyeon bursts out of the stairwell and into the foyer, and then has an awful thought. “Baek, have you been drinking today?”

Baekhyun pants into the phone for a few moments, and then, “No,” he says. “No, and I’m so scared, and I don’t know what I might accidentally…”

“It's okay,” Junmyeon says. “It’s okay, I’m coming to find you, alright?”

“Please hurry,” Baekhyun whispers, and then the line goes dead. Junmyeon pockets his phone and then sprints out into the dark street. He looks left and right, takes a deep breath, and starts running in the direction he thinks the station is.

He finds the station before he finds Baekhyun. Backstreets, he remembers Baekhyun saying, so he peels off the main road and onto one of the winding, cobbled streets, and runs and runs and runs.

Junmyeon doesn't know how long he's been running. Ten minutes? Fifteen? He circles back around to the station and tries a different street. Baekhyun is somewhere out here, alone and terrified. Junmyeon clutches onto a corner for a few seconds to catch his breath, then pushes off and runs in a different direction.

Junmyeon rounds a corner and suddenly, there he is. He's on the other side of a huge wrought iron gate, curled on the ground with his back pressed up against it. Surrounding him are dozens of wisps of pure light, like an army of fireflies.

“Baekhyun,” Junmyeon calls, running toward him. His chest is on fire, and his legs burn so badly that they give out as soon as reaches the gate. The gaps are big enough for Junmyeon to fit his arms through, and he wraps one around Baekhyun's chest from behind. He's trembling so hard that the chains on the gate are rattling. “Baek, are you okay?”

Baekhyun gives no indication that he heard him, but all at once the floating lights disappear. Junmyeon reaches up and feels for the gate’s lock, but it's chained shut and secured with a padlock.

“I'm gonna go around the block so I can get through this gate, okay?” Junmyeon says. “Wait here, I'll be right back.”

He starts to pull his arm back through the gate, but Baekhyun suddenly has a vice-like grip around his wrist. He’s so, so cold, colder than the metal bars against Junmyeon’s chest. “Please don't go,” he whispers, and Junmyeon slowly sits back down on the cobblestones.

“Okay,” Junmyeon says. He takes a few deep breaths. There's sweat cooling on his forehead, and he's only wearing a t-shirt. “Okay.” The streets here are narrow, and it's so dark that the walls around him only appear as vague blocks of shadow. He can barely even make out the outline of the gate right beside his face. He tightens his arm around Baekhyun.

“I'm sorry,” Baekhyun says. The night is so quiet, now. Baekhyun won't stop trembling. “I didn't mean to make those lights, I really didn't, but I was so, so scared.”

“It's okay,” Junmyeon says. He squeezes Baekhyun's shoulder, hard. “It's okay.”

Baekhyun’s head lowers to rest on his knees. The ends of his hair tickle Junmyeon’s bare arm. “Thank you for coming to find me.”

“It's okay,” Junmyeon says again. The lights still aren't back on.

“You should come back sometime,” Baekhyun says. His voice is soft and vague, and Junmyeon gets the feeling he's talking more to himself than to Junmyeon. “Back to Lyon. In December there's _le Fête des Lumières_ \-- the Festival of Lights. All the old buildings are lit up, in every colour imaginable. It's like magic.”

In that dark Lyon backstreet, waiting for the lights to come back on, Junmyeon decides two things. First, that he will do anything and everything in his power to make sure that Baekhyun never has to be afraid again, and second, that he needs to go to Almaty and see Jongdae.

 

 

When Jongin last left Seoul Junmyeon assumed that, like always, he’d leave nothing behind. A few days later, though, he noticed an untidy scrawl on the shopping list on his fridge. Jongin's handwriting was atrocious, so it took Junmyeon a few moments to realise that he'd written an address. An Almaty address, to be specific, so there was really only one person it could be.

Now, though, standing in front of the building Jongin had written, Junmyeon remembers how Jongin had forgotten the number of his apartment when he arrived, and wonders if maybe he's done it again. This can't possibly be the right place, because, from what Junmyeon can tell, the building in front of him is a public library.

It's not like he couldn't have asked Jongdae himself for his address, but if he'd done that then Jongdae probably would've told him not to come, and he… he doesn't know if he could handle that.

He glances down at the shopping list in his hand again, back up at the library, and then down again. There's a little footnote scrawled at the bottom of the list, with a big star. _*go in the side door!!_ it reads, and when Junmyeon goes down the alley beside the building he sees that there is, in fact, a side door. He tries the handle, and it's unlocked. So there's that.

The air inside is dusty and stale when Junmyeon steps inside. He coughs into his sleeve, then glances up. He's in a room the size of a closet and a wooden staircase, rotting in places, is winding upward and then doubling back on itself such that Junmyeon can't see where it leads. There are no lights and no windows, and when Junmyeon lets the door click shut behind him, the stairwell goes dark and gloomy. There's light coming from somewhere above, though, which is probably a good sign.

He starts up the staircase, and almost trips over a cardboard box balanced on the bottom step. He looks closer, and sees that the inside are bottles of water and a loaf of bread, and even a few pieces of fresh fruit that haven't even begun to rot.

“Alright, that's a little weird,” Junmyeon says to himself, mostly just to break the damp, ominous silence. He steps over the box of groceries and starts up the stairs.

It gets brighter the higher he goes, and the air tastes less stale, too. After a few flights, maybe three floors by Junmyeon's estimation, he comes out into a wide corridor. One side is lined with arched windows that look out to the street, and the other with shelves that stretch floor to ceiling, every inch crammed with books.

Junmyeon walks slowly along the corridor, running his fingertip along the spines of the books. None of them are in a language that he can read, and there's a thick layer of dust over everything. Junmyeon feels like he's the first person to be up here in decades. 

The corridor stretches the length of the building, and there’s a closed door at the end of it. He starts toward it, but a muffled thud comes from behind him, in the direction of the staircase. He spins around, but the corridor behind him is still. 

He makes his way warily back to the stairs, but when he leans back into the stairwell and looks down, then up, he can't see anyone. There's a single book lying on one of the stairs a few steps above him. He picks it up and leafs through it, but he can't read a word. He holds it up at shoulder height and lets it drop back onto the step. It hits the stair with the exact same sound that caught his attention a few moments ago. 

“Okay,” Junmyeon mutters, “this is getting really, really weird.”

An abrupt _bang_ comes from the other end of the corridor, like a door slamming, or something heavy hitting the floor. Junmyeon whirls around and stares, frozen, at the door, but nothing more happens. Junmyeon takes a deep breath.

There's definitely someone else up here, and Junmyeon has the distinct feeling they're toying with him. He very nearly decides to throw it all in and take the stairs out of here very quickly, to stay in a hostel tonight and fly back in the morning. But, if there's even the slightest possibility that Jongdae is here, somewhere in this building, then he doesn't think he could forgive himself for walking away. He takes a deep breath and starts up the stairs to the next level.

The next floor is much the same as the one below it. He peers out one of the arched windows and counts the floors on the building opposite. The sixth is about level with where he is now. The staircase is still stretching up, and there's no end in sight. He climbs quietly up to the next level, the distinct feeling that he's not alone stronger than ever.

He’s at the landing mid-way between levels when, out of nowhere, a voice begins shouting. It's a man's voice, and not a language that Junmyeon understands. It echoes into an ear-splitting crescendo in the small space, and Junmyeon covers his ears with his hands. He might not understand the meaning, but the voice seems to Junmyeon to be more frightened than angry.

And it all happens so abruptly that it takes Junmyeon a few seconds to register all this, and a few more seconds to think clearly enough to realise that this is a voice he knows.

“Jongdae?” he shouts back, uncovering his ears and craning his neck to look up the stairs. “Is that you?”

The shouting cuts off abruptly. A few moments later Jongdae’s face appears a few flights above him, peering over the railing. “Junmyeon?” he yells down. “Holy shit, what are you doing here?” 

Junmyeon laughs, the sound echoing around them both. “Kind of a long story,” he says. “Can I come up?”

Jongdae disappears behind the railing, so Junmyeon takes that as an invitation and starts climbing the stairs. He rounds a corner at the same time as Jongdae does, and they stare at each other for a moment over a single flight of stairs.

“Uh,” Junmyeon says, glancing down to the lower levels. “There was some, like, fruit and stuff at the bottom of the stairs. I'm guessing it's yours?” Jongdae raises a single eyebrow at him, and god, it's such a stupid thing for Junmyeon to have missed, but he did anyway. “You might wanna move it or something. You know, tripping hazard.”

Junmyeon sees Jongdae's shoulders tremble with suppressed laughter. He starts down the stairs toward Junmyeon, very slowly. “Is this speaking from experience?” Jongdae asks. His hair is longer than it ever was when Junmyeon knew him. It's tied back at the nape of his neck, and a few pieces have come loose and are brushing his jaw.

“It might be,” Junmyeon says, and Jongdae laughs. The midday sun hits the building at an angle that lets beams of light shaft into the stairwell. 

Jongdae looks around at the strips of light painted against the walls, the floor and then back at Junmyeon. “Why did you come here?” Jongdae asks him. “You shouldn't have done that. Not without telling me first.”

“Because,” Junmyeon says, running a single finger along the bannister. It comes away thick with dust. “You probably would've told me not to.”

“Probably,” Jongdae agrees. He's halfway down the stairs. Junmyeon doesn’t dream, but if he did they would probably all be about Jongdae and the way he looks right now, in a worn white t-shirt that’s too big, the sun falling into him from one side.

“Why were you so scared, before you realised who I was?” Junmyeon asks.

Jongdae smiles, that familiar little feline smile of his. “Ah, well that,” he says, “is also a long story.”

“There seems to be a lot of those going around these days,” Junmyeon says. Jongdae reaches the landing, and they look at each other. Jongdae's lost weight, a lot of it, but they're still the same height. 

“When do you leave?” Jongdae asks. There's dust drifting down around them, caught in the slanting sunlight coming in from above.

Junmyeon drops his hand from the bannister. “Tomorrow afternoon.” 

Jongdae sighs. “I guess it's for the best, isn't it?” Part of Junmyeon agrees, and part of him wants to stand in this dusty, rotting stairwell with Jongdae for the rest of his life and die the happiest man alive.

“Come on,” Jongdae says, taking Junmyeon's hand. “Let's go upstairs. I think we have a lot of things to tell each other.”

 

 

Jongdae leaves Seoul at the end of a week of catastrophic storms. By the second day, the streets closest to the river have flooded, and on the third lightning destroys some of the tallest trees in Han river park. By the fifth day a state of emergency has been called. On the sixth, the gale winds push an enormous pine onto a car carrying a family of four.

So on the seventh day Jongdae, with thunder etched into the shadows of his face, turns to Junmyeon and says, “We can’t keep doing this.” He looks out the window at where the storm is raging, black and fearsome. “People are getting hurt.” He closes his eyes. “I’ll go.”

He’s right. Jongdae’s right, but Junmyeon still wants to scream and cry and make it rain so hard that it razes this entire city to the ground, because he might’ve only just realised that he’s a little bit fucking in love with Jongdae, and now he has to leave.

Instead, though, he rests his head on Jongdae’s shoulder, lets him squeeze his hand until it goes numb, and watches the storm, their storm, lash against the windows, rain and fire intertwining in the sky and falling to earth as one.

 

 

Jongdae lives in an empty room above the library. There’s a mattress on the floor, and a desk and chair in one corner, and then nothing else except for stacks upon stacks of books.

“Isn’t this technically like… illegal squatting?” Junmyeon says, stepping gingerly over a pile of books and dropping into the desk chair.

“Technically,” Jongdae says. “But these are all archives-- local history, obscure memoirs, that kind of thing. No one ever comes up here. Plus,” Jongdae shifts a pile of books aside on his desk, and leans back against it. “There’s an urban legend that this wing of the building is haunted.” 

Junmyeon idly flips open the notebook resting on the desk in front of him. “So that would explain all the poltergeist stuff you were pulling,” Junmyeon says. It’s filled with Jongdae’s slanted writing, in a script Junmyeon can’t understand. He wonders what language Jongdae dreams in.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Jongdae says. “Normally people freak out and run after the slamming doors and stuff, but then you came up the stairs so I kind of just panicked and started shouting ghosty things at you.” He laughs a little. “Not that you could understand it. Kind of a shame. I think it was pretty good, as far as impromptu ghosty monologues go.”

“But, why were you so scared? I’ve never--” _seen you that scared_ , he almost says, but that’s not true. Junmyeon was there the first time Jongdae made lightning with his hands.

Jongdae shakes his head. “You first. Why are you here?”

Junmyeon goes quiet for a moment. Jongdae watches him patiently, then he asks, “Does Jongin come to see you often?”

“As often as he can,” Jongdae replies. He pushes off the desk to look through a stack of books beside the bed. “Why?”

“Have you noticed anything… different about him?” Junmyeon says carefully, and Jongdae glances back over his shoulder at him.

“Ah, so you did notice. I thought you might.” He pulls a book out of the stack. “I started noticing the memory problems about two years ago. I’ve been testing him every time he comes to visit since.” He flicks through the pages. “He gets worse every time.”

“Do you know why?” Junmyeon asks.

Jongdae sighs and flips the book shut. “I can’t say for certain, but…” He tosses it onto the bed, and then collapses back onto the sheets beside it. “People aren’t supposed to disappear and then come back together, thousands of miles away. There are bound to be… complications.” He props himself up on his elbows and stares at Junmyeon for a few moments. “You went to see Baek too?”

“Yeah, he…” Junmyeon swallows. “He wasn’t good. But you already knew that, didn’t you? You’ve known for a long time.”

“I have,” Jongdae murmurs. “I just don’t know what to do about it. I have some theories, though.”

“Yeah?” Junmyeon says. “Let’s hear them.” 

Jongdae stands up and goes to another stack, pulling out yet another book. “About a year ago,” he mutters, leafing through the pages, “Jongin told me that sometimes he’d get stuck. He could teleport, but not more than a few kilometres at a time. It never happened for more than a day or two, and there didn't seem to be a pattern. I asked him to record when it happened, and for how long, and it turns out all the times coincided with either a rainstorm over Seoul, or a thunderstorm here in Almaty.”

“That’s…” Junmyeon frowns. “Well, that’s something, but what does it mean?”

“I didn’t know either, but then…” Jongdae bites his lip, and then laughs a little. “I guess we’ll be getting to my part of the story quicker than I anticipated. Alright, well.” He takes a deep breath. “You’ve probably noticed-- things are changing with us. Baekhyun didn’t always leak radiation, or we’d have seen a lot more people getting sick.”

Junmyeon nods. “Jongin only stayed in Seoul for six days this time. He used to only be able to move across continents every two weeks.”

“Exactly,” Jongdae says. “When I first came to Almaty I lived in an apartment, with roommates and everything. I worked, too, but a couple of years ago…” Jongdae stares down at the book in his hands, but Junmyeon can see that he’s not really reading it. “I shocked one of my roommates without meaning to. He was fine, but it kept happening, and I couldn’t control it. It was getting stronger every time too, and I was afraid I was going to really hurt someone.” He looks up, a faint smile on his face. His eyes are so, so sad. “So I did the only logical thing, and illegally moved into the haunted library.”

Junmyeon knows now, why Jongin had wanted him to go to Almaty so badly. Jongdae’s been alone up here for two years, with only Jongin’s company for a week at a time.

“Here’s the interesting part though,” Jongdae says. He stands up from the bed and begins to walk over to Junmyeon. “The first time Jongin came to visit me here, I thought I was going to accidentally kill him.” Jongdae stares down at him, his eyes roving over Junmyeon’s face. “But instead, I just…” He raises his hand to Junmyeon’s cheek. There’s a blinding flash of light right next to Junmyeon’s face. He flinches and squeezes his eyes closed, but doesn’t move away. His cheek is tingling, and when he opens his eyes, Jongdae is staring down at him so tenderly that he almost forgets to breathe. He swipes his thumb briefly across Junmyeon’s cheekbone, and then steps back.

“What was that?” Junmyeon asks. His heart is beating very hard.

“I just shocked you,” Jongdae says. “Quite powerfully, too. Anyone else would probably be dead right now. Anyone but you or Jongin. Baekhyun too, I’m guessing.”

“Why, though?” Junmyeon tries not to think about the fact that Jongdae could’ve just killed him, and the fact that that's not what has his heart racing. “I don’t understand how all these things relate.”

“Ah, so this is where my theory comes into play.” He stands up and paces the room. In another life, Jongdae would’ve made a great professor. “The human body is amazing, but there’s no way it can hold enough potential energy to power the things we can do. The energy has to be coming from somewhere else, and I think all four of us are getting it from the same source.” He stops pacing to look up at Junmyeon. “Like a circuit.”

“A circuit?” Junmyeon asks. “As in an electrical circuit?”

“Exactly,” Jongdae says. He starts pacing again. “Think about it. Jongin can’t go anywhere when you or I are using too much energy to make a storm. Just like lightbulbs in a circuit that doesn’t have enough voltage-- they can’t shine as brightly. And I can’t hurt you or Jongin, because we’re already connected-- it’s like adding an extra wire between two components of a circuit. Charge can flow across it, but it’s the same charge that you already have flowing through you. Of course it doesn’t hurt you.”

Junmyeon sits there, for a moment. “That seems… very possible.” Jongdae looks satisfied. Junmyeon frowns. “How do we stop it, though?”

Jongdae sighs and sits down on the edge of the bed. “See, that’s where I’m stuck. None of us are the power source-- the battery, so to speak. We can’t just switch it off.”

Junmyeon looks at Jongdae closely. He seems very small, in this room with peeling white paint that he’s filled to the brim with books. “You’ve been doing a lot of thinking up here, haven’t you?”

Jongdae stares at the floor for a few moments before answering. “I taught myself Kazakh, and then I taught myself Russian, and I can only read so many books in one sitting.” He laughs, a humourless shrug of his shoulders. “I have a lot of time to think.” There’s this awful, constricting feeling in Junmyeon’s chest, one that stretches up to his throat and makes it hard to speak. It’s the same way he felt holding onto Baekhyun through that gate in the dark, as he trembled and trembled and wouldn’t stop, and the same way it felt to watch Jongin squint out his living room window across Seoul in the direction he knows his parents’ house is. 

“But, it could be worse,” Jongdae continues. “There’s a bathroom down the hall with running water, and there’s no electricity, but the candles are kind of nice. Ambience, you know. My old roommate drops off food for me every few days, so at least I won’t starve--” He turns to look at Junmyeon. “Which reminds me, you said there were groceries by the door?”

Junmyeon nods, and Jongdae gets to his feet. “I should go get them. I’ll be right back.”

It’d be stupid, Junmyeon thinks, to climb down eight storeys of stairs and back up again just because he doesn’t want Jongdae to leave his sight. So he stays where he is as Jongdae leaves, even though the last time Junmyeon had let Jongdae walk away from him, he’d boarded a plane to Kazakhstan and never come back.

Junmyeon turns to the stacks of books on the desk, idly scanning all the titles, until one catches his eye. He picks it up slowly, and turns it over in his hands. It’s a paperback copy of the final Harry Potter book in Korean, dog-eared and worn. Junmyeon opens to a random page and begins reading, to pass the time. 

Junmyeon senses Jongdae before he sees him. He glances up, and Jongdae’s standing in the doorway, a cardboard box in his arms, staring out the window at the other side of the room.

“Do you feel that?” he asks, his gaze not moving from the window. Junmyeon follows it, and sees that the sky that’d been bright, spring blue when he arrived is now swirling and white with the beginning of clouds, wind skimming over the rooftops like a warning.

And Junmyeon can feel it, a tension in the air high, high above, a bow-string pulled taut. “Yeah,” he says. When he looks over at Jongdae, he’s staring straight back. “I thought that maybe, since it’s been so long, it might not…”

Jongdae’s gaze is soft enough to make Junmyeon shiver. “I knew it would,” he says quietly. “It always will.”

This is the real problem, Junmyeon thinks. It’s why Baekhyun doesn’t sing anymore, and why there’s always showers in Seoul in late Spring. Junmyeon can’t be around Jongdae and not feel this way, like he's as bright as Baekhyun was when he was still young and fearless. He can’t have Jongdae without the skies opening up and pouring his heart out onto the streets and rooftops for everyone to see. He’d hoped, maybe, that after all these years apart, they could be together without tearing the sky apart. But Jongdae had already known, and Junmyeon knows now, that they still are, and always will be, tragically, hopelessly in love.

The view outside the window suddenly goes white, the room falling into shadow. Junmyeon jumps, but then Jongdae starts laughing, and doesn’t stop.

“That’s my…” He has to put down the box of groceries at his feet, he’s laughing so hard. “I hung my washing out on the roof to dry--” he glances back up at the window, then starts laughing all over again. “That’s my fucking _bedsheet_.” He backs out of the room before Joonmyun can even reply. 

“Wait,” Junmyeon calls after him as he pushes out of the chair and follows. “Jongdae, wait!” The corridor outside is empty when he reaches it, but he follows the sound of Jongdae’s laughter to a door atop a handful of steps. He pushes it open, and comes out on the roof of the library. The wind tears at him, and the sky is darkening by the second.

Jongdae is wrestling his clothes from the line strung across the roof. Junmyeon runs to help, and gets greeted with a t-shirt to the face. 

“Make sure they don’t blow away!” Jongdae shouts over the wind. He drapes a pair of jeans around his own neck like a scarf, and when he looks back up at Junmyeon, he’s laughing louder than the wind.

It only takes them a minute to clear all the laundry, the only casualty a pair of Jongdae’s underpants that were swept over the edge by a particularly vengeful gust of wind. Junmyeon has his arm through half a dozen t-shirts, and he shoved all the socks in his pockets for lack of a better place, and he hasn’t laughed this much since, since...

“Quick, help me with this!” Jongdae calls over his shoulder. He’s running towards the sheet, which is still plastered against the window of his room. He has to lean over the balcony and stretch his arm out reach the corner of it, and Junmyeon runs up behind him and grabs a handful of his t-shirt, in case he should lean too far.

“Almost,” Jongdae’s saying, “almost got it,” and then he has a corner of it in his hand and yanks it back toward them. It floats in the air for a moment, then the wind takes hold of it and throws it back over both of them. Jongdae has enough time to straighten up and turn to face him, and then the world goes around them goes white.

Jongdae’s eyes are still laughing, as he looks up at Junmyeon, the sheet whipping around them. They really could be the only two people in the world, right now. Then Jongdae is reaching up to take Junmyeon’s face in his hands, and Junmyeon has just enough presence of mind to press his heel down against a corner of the sheet before Jongdae kisses him.

Junmyeon tries to get closer, to wrap his arms around Jongdae, but there are about four jackets tied around his waist that are getting in the way. Jongdae laughs into his mouth. “This is normally the part where I wake up,” he whispers, and then the wind whips the sheet away from them again, only Junmyeon’s heel pinning it to the ground saving it from being swept away.

Junmyeon feels the rain break from the clouds and a second later it hits them, cold and instant, but Jongdae doesn’t stop kissing him, kisses him harder. There’s a blinding flash and a resounding _boom_ of thunder, close and all-consuming. Jongdae pulls back but doesn’t let go of Junmyeon, stares at him with raindrops catching on his eyelashes, and this is another of those moments Junmyeon wishes he could bottle and keep forever; Jongdae’s hair slicked to his cheeks and his hands cupping Junmyeon’s jaw, laughter caught in the corners of his eyes.

And later; Jongdae's hands on him, creating tiny sparks wherever he touches, mapping every inch of Joonmyun like he's trying to commit it to memory so that tomorrow, when Junmyeon leaves and doesn't come back, he might be able to find his way home. Thunder so loud it shakes the room as Jongdae grips Junmyeon’s shoulder hard enough to draw blood. His face pressed against Junmyeon’s neck, wet with tears.

 

 

Junmyeon remembers something, when night has long since fallen, and the candle on Jongdae’s desk is lit so that they have something to see by.

Another science lesson, his first year of highschool. The four of them were in the same class, one of the few that they all shared over the years.

“Turn it up,” Baekhyun had said, reaching for the voltage knob. “I wanna see how bright they can get. I bet they’re not even as bright as my little finger.”

“The globes will blow,” Jongdae said, without even looking up from his workbook.

“Why is he being so weirdly competitive about this?” Jongin muttered to Junmyeon. “They’re light-globes.”

Junmyeon shrugged, and then Baekhyun had gotten a hand on the voltage and with an abrupt _pop_ , all the globes had gone out.

“I _told_ you,” Jongdae sighed, and he and Junmyeon spent the next two minutes connecting and reconnecting the circuit to work out which globe had blown so they could replace it.

One more thing-- _The Tale of the Three Brothers_ , from the pages of the Harry Potter book Junmyeon had read this afternoon at Jongdae’s desk. A story about brothers who were granted wishes by Death, because Death knew he had something to gain in return.

And just like that, Junmyeon has the answer. He knows how to keep Jongin in one place for more than a week, and how to make it so Baekhyun doesn’t have to drink himself to sleep every night, and how to let Jongdae leave the lonely, forgotten floors of this library and walk the streets without hurting anyone. It’s so unbelievably simple.

“What’s that look on your face?” frowns Jongdae, watching him from the other side of the bed. “It's like you’re happy, but…” The sheet is pulled up over his bare shoulder, and Junmyeon reaches for it.

“Nothing,” he says, peeling the sheet slowly downward, his thumb brushing the length of Jongdae’s arm. Jongdae closes his eyes and shivers. “Nothing at all.”

 

 

They don’t sleep that night, and the storm is still raging when Junmyeon leaves in the morning. Jongdae comes with him all the way to the door. In that tiny space at the bottom stairs, Jongdae turns to him, eyes shining. He opens his mouth as if to speak, and then stops and swallows thickly.

“I know,” Junmyeon says, then cups Jongdae’s face between his palms and pulls him forward so he can press his lips to his forehead. He feels Jongdae shudder against him, and Junmyeon closes his eyes and tries to remember to breathe. Then, he lets go and slips out into the storm. The last thing he sees before the wind shuts the door behind him is Jongdae standing there just as Junmyeon had left him, head bowed and eyes closed, his lips forming Junmyeon’s name.

And hours later, somewhere in the skies between Almaty and Incheon, Junmyeon realises that in his dream, the one with the little red boat, he was so busy trying to fight the current that he never did think to look upstream, to see where it was that the river was taking him.

 

 

Junmyeon’s only been away two weeks, but his apartment in Seoul doesn’t feel like his own anymore. He leaves his suitcase in the entryway, walks into the centre of the living room, then doubles over like he's been forced to the ground by a giant, invisible hand.

It takes him a few moments to realise what’s happening. He's only felt it once before, when he was seventeen. He'd collapsed in the middle of the school hallway, and then two days later, hundred of miles to the south, the ocean had risen up and swallowed almost a thousand people.

Junmyeon can feel the ghost of it now, so strongly that his entire body shakes, can pinpoint exactly where the water will crawl out of the ocean and onto land. And he has one, resounding thought break through the sound of crashing waves in his ears; making a river flow upstream and pushing back an ocean are almost the same thing.

It will happen soon, but not so soon that Junmyeon can't make it there first. The premonition lifts off him slowly, lets him uncurl his body and, when the crashing of the ocean recedes, Junmyeon is made aware of an urgent meowing coming from very close by.

He lifts his head. The grey cat is there on his balcony, pawing at the glass between them. Junmyeon crawls forward a few feet so he can reach up and flick the lock open, then pulls the door open a few inches. The cat slinks through the gap, arching her back and rubbing up against Junmyeon's arm.

“Hi, there,” he says. She trills back, and Junmyeon smiles. “I'd feed you, but I don't think I should. I--” Junmyeon sits back against the base of the couch. “I'm going away again, soon. The people who live here after me might not be very nice, so you shouldn't get into the habit of coming back.” 

The cat tilts her fuzzy little head, tail flicking behind her. “You remind me a lot of my friend, actually,” he says. “He tends to drift back to places where people treat him nicely. I hope he doesn't come looking for me here, too.” Junmyeon closes his eyes and lets his head fall back onto the couch cushions. He feels the cat rub up against his knee. “If you see him, tell him he should apply for those flight attendant schools.”

The cat meows dutifully. “And,” Junmyeon continues, eyes still squeezed shut, “and if you see my other friend? The one with the voice like nothing else you've ever heard. He's so loud, you can't possibly miss him. Could you… could you tell him that nothing was his fault. None of it.” The cat is purring now, a low hum of comfort. “And to stop being so stubborn and make up with Jongin, for God’s sake.” 

The cat steps up delicately into Junmyeon's lap, and curls up into a ball across his thighs. “And the third one,” Junmyeon whispers. “The one that looks a lot like you when he smiles.” It's only when the cat meows in discontent and shakes herself abruptly, that Junmyeon realises he's crying, his tears falling into her fur. “Sorry,” he says, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “Sorry. Just. Tell him that… that I love him. And that I want him to be happy.” Junmyeon lets out a deep breath. “That's all, I think,” he says, and the cat looks up at him with something very intelligent in her green eyes. “Thanks.”

She unfurls herself from his lap and stretches luxuriously, then, after brushing herself against Junmyeon's leg with one final _meow_ , slinks back out the gap in the door. He watches as she jumps up delicately onto the railing of his balcony, pads around to the side, and then leaps off, toward the next balcony over. Junmyeon stands up and opens the door enough that he can stick his head out.

The cat isn't on the next balcony over. Nor is she on the one after, or still on his. She's gone, disappeared without a single trace. 

Junmyeon turns his head to look at the familiar shapes of the Seoul skyline, knowing that soon he’ll leave too, and won't ever come back. Somehow, for the first time in his life, that thought doesn't terrify him.

 

 

The rush of the waves is soft and steady, deep blue blinking shards of light back toward him. Junmyeon closes his eyes, his skin burning pleasantly under the sun, and from the heat of the sand below him. There are children running around in the surf, he can hear them laughing. A breeze that tastes of salt brushes past him, and overhead, a gull cries out.

There's a sudden, enormous _whoosh_ , like the entire ocean is holding its breath. The people around him fall silent, and then, one person starts screaming, and then another and all at once there’s a rush of noise, of people shouting and crying and running, away from the water. Junmyeon doesn't open his eyes. The sun keeps beating down on him, steady and warm.

When the last of the noise has gone, Junmyeon opens his eyes and gets to his feet. The ocean is gone, pulled back into the distance so far that Junmyeon has to squint to see it. Slowly, yet with a force Junmyeon can feel even from a distance, the horizon builds up into a solid blue line that rises and rises and rises, until it’s bearing down on Junmyeon, as tall as a skyscraper.

Junmyeon raises both arms, palms facing directly out in front of him. He takes a deep breath, and then pushes back. 

At first, nothing happens. It's like pushing at a solid brick wall with his bare hands, and Junmyeon has a momentary swoop of fear in his stomach, and wonders if he's made a terrible, terrible mistake. 

_No_ , Junmyeon thinks. He remembers what Jongin looked like the last time Junmyeon saw him, eyes tired and sad. “No,” he says, pushing harder. Holding Baekhyun in the dark while he shivered with fear. Junmyeon throws himself harder at the wall of water in front of him. Jongdae, above that library with his books and candles, alone until the end of time. “No!” Junmyeon yells, and throws everything he can at the ocean.

And finally, finally he feels it start to give. Something inside Junmyeon is starting to splinter too, but he just pushes, harder and harder, and then the sea tears away from the sky, and from somewhere between the two, Junmyeon sees Jongin. 

He's sitting in a living room, with a man Junmyeon doesn't recognise. There's a video-game controller in his hands, but as Junmyeon watches he gasps and drops it to his lap.

“Jongin?” the unfamiliar man says. “Are you okay?”

Jongin pants, clutching at his chest. “Something… Something's not…” He looks up abruptly, right into Junmyeon's eyes. “Junmyeon?”

And then Jongin is gone, and Junmyeon is watching Baekhyun as he sits bolt upright in bed. His face is ghostly pale as he squints into the darkness. “Junmyeon,” he says suddenly, looking around wildly. “Junmyeon, wait. _Wait!_ ”

But the he's gone too, torn away into the swirl of the surf, and Junmyeon's watching Jongdae from behind as he sits at his desk. The candle in front of him flickers, and he suddenly straightens in his seat. Slowly, slowly, he turns around to look Junmyeon in the eye. “Junmyeon?” he asks hopefully, and then the realisation dawns on him. “No. No, Junmyeon, don't. _Please._ ”

“I'm sorry,” Junmyeon whispers, and then Jongdae disappears and it's just him and the water. 

Junmyeon gathers up all of himself; his past and his present and his future, and all of the love that his body could never hold. He pulls all of it up into the centre of his chest, and when it's so full he feels like he's going to burst, he takes it and _pushes_. All at once, he feels something inside him break. Everything stops; the wall of water ahead of him, the sounds, the sun, the thundering of his own heart in his chest.

Junmyeon sees the furious sea before him begin to calm, to withdraw, to slip back into its rightful place. He closes his eyes, then, and a great, blue silence washes over him, sweeps him up, and then away.

 

 

It's warm today, for late spring. Jongdae's glad he left his jacket at home, even though the wind sweeping into him off the water is a little on the chilly side. It's nice, to be outside on a day like this.

They see him before he sees them, and when Jongdae glances up, two figures are already waving at him from beneath the bridge. He quickens his pace, and soon he's close enough for Jongin to run the last few steps and sweep him into a hug. His hair is still buzzed from his enlistment, and it scratches against Jongdae's cheek.

“Alright, alright,” Jongdae says, pushing him off. “God, you never used to be this clingy.”

Baekhyun is hovering somewhere behind Jongin, hands in his pockets. “You're late,” he says, but steps forward to hug Jongdae, too.

“Sorry,” Jongdae says. “I got caught up at the university.” Jongin crouches down by the wall, his fingers tracing across the layers upon layers of paint. “Is this why you wanted to meet here instead of at the restaurant?” Jongdae asks, and Jongin nods.

“I was here last year with Junmyeon. It was dark, so I didn't look. But I came back this morning, and look,” he says, pointing at the wall. Baekhyun leans over his back to look. “It's not there anymore.”

Sure enough, the line of white graffiti that used to sit in the corner of the wall is gone, without a trace. “Huh,” Jongdae says, and Baekhyun straightens up. His hair falls into his eyes, and he flicks it out of the way, frowning. He's growing it out for a role in an upcoming musical back in France. He's supposedly the lead, which means he's probably meant to look cool, but Jongdae thinks he looks exactly as nerdy as he did when he grew it out at fourteen.

“How long before you have to go back to training?” Baekhyun asks Jongin.

“Three days,” Jongin says. “I need to apply for flight attendant academies for when I'm discharged next year.”

“Flight attending?” Jongdae asks. “Where’d that idea come from?”

Jongin kicks at the concrete with the heel of his sneaker. “You're gonna laugh at me if I tell you.”

“Yeah, probably,” Baekhyun says. Jongdae and Jongin both send him the same threatening look, and he holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, only a small laugh. A chuckle, at most.”

Jongin frowns, but he still leans back against the wall and says, “A cat told me to.” Baekhyun does laugh, and the corner of Jongin's mouth quirks, like he wants to too. “In a dream.”

Jongdae's eyes meet Baekhyun's, and for a moment absolute understanding passes between them. Baekhyun seems a little different, these days. Calmer, maybe. Jongdae wonders what it was that Junmyeon told Baekhyun, through a little grey cat in his dreams.

 _I love you. Be happy_. That was what Junmyeon said to him. And for a long time, for weeks, months, he thought he never would be. Not in a world where Junmyeon didn’t exist. But, time wore on. More weeks, more months. Jongdae went to France to see Baekhyun, and then to London, where Jongin was staying with Taemin before he decided to enlist. He walked along the streets at dawn and dusk and in the middle of the night, and it felt so foreign and yet so familiar, to smile at cashiers or at strangers on the street, and then never see them again. He’d spent two years convincing himself he didn’t need these things, didn’t need anything except for himself and his books.

And then, by the time he finally flew back to Seoul for the first time in four years, he could see a future where, maybe, he would be happy. Now, a year later, with his first year at university almost over, it’s feels even closer.

Baekhyun is watching him, smiling a little bit. “You loved him a lot, didn’t you?”

Jongdae looks up at him, then over at Jongin. “Didn’t we all?”

“Yeah,” Jongin says. “But not the same way you did.”

Jongdae looks out over the water. “I suppose, yeah.” For a split-second, Jongdae thinks he sees a silhouette that looks a lot like Junmyeon standing on the opposite bank, downstream from them, waving with both arms. But then he blinks, and no one is there, the only movement the river beating on steadily between them. Jongdae turns away from the water, toward his friends.

“Come on,” he says, throwing an arm over Baekhyun’s shoulders and nudging Jongin with his foot until he stands. “We should go and eat. They won’t hold our reservation forever.”

Together, the three of them walk away from that bridge, alongside the flow of the river, and Jongdae doesn’t, not even for one moment, think about looking back.

 

 

_Light._

_Light, and heat, and the sound of surf. Junmyeon sits up slowly and opens his eyes._

_In front of him is water, stretching out in every direction as far as he can see, big and beautiful and blue. He’s sitting on sand, hot to touch from sunlight, but cold beneath the surface when he digs his fingers deeper. On the shore just in front of him are the splintered remains of a boat, red paint and dark wood. Pieces of it are starting to drift away, out into the water._

_There’s no wind, and no birds either; no sound at all, in fact, but for the gentle lap of the waves. A shadow falls across the back of Junmyeon’s neck._

_“Finally awake, hm?” Junmyeon tilts his head back and squints up into the sun. Baekhyun is leaning over him, face upside-down and bathed in shadow, smiling. “We thought you’d be asleep down here forever!”_

_Junmyeon sits up and spins around so he can look at Baekhyun properly. He’s wearing a Digimon t-shirt that Junmyeon hasn’t seen him in since they were about sixteen._

_“No, I…” Junmyeon says, furrowing his eyebrows. “I’m awake, now.” Behind Baekhyun, he can see Jongin and Jongdae making their way toward them, laughing at something._

_“Come on, then, get up,” Baekhyun says, offering Junmyeon his hand. Junmyeon takes it and stands, brushing the sand off him. “We’re gonna go explore those caves beneath the cliffs.”_

_“I…” Junmyeon looks out at the ocean and for a moment, a brief trick of the light, the water seems like it’s not moving at all. “Yeah,” he says, turning to follow Baekhyun along the shore, where he’s jogging to catch up with Jongin and Jongdae. Overhead, the summer sun beams down brightly, like it intends to shine and shine and never stop. “I’m coming.”_

**Author's Note:**

> The words Baekhyun says in his sleep, _‘N’éteins pas la lumière’_ , translate to ‘Don’t turn out the light’.
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Edit, Nov 2016:  
> some people were asking me about what's going on with taekai here since i kind of skimmed over it in the fic because i didn't feel it was important, but because taekai is always important i'm gonna dump it all here. but feel free to ignore all of this tbh it's basically just headcanons  
> -taemin is a pilot, even though he's only in his mid twenties like all the others  
> -he was adopted by an english couple as a baby and has lived there his whole life, so didn't speak any korean until he met jongin  
> -his parents are loaded which is how he became a pilot so young, because they paid for lessons throughout his teens to get his flight hours up, and also how he's able to pay for basically all of jongin's living expenses  
> -they're not dating, they're just inseparable best friends (taemin is aroace)  
> -jongin speaks english with the poshest accent of all time because he learned it from hanging out with taem (i die)
> 
>  
> 
> ANOTHER EDIT will i ever get my shit together (the answer is no):
> 
> It's been over a year since I wrote this but I just found a list of other works I used as inspirations or this fic while cleaning out my docs and I thought I should acknowledge them, no matter how late, since this fic wouldn't exist without them. J.M. Barrie's _Peter Pan; or, The Boy who Wouldn't Grow Up_ which I used in the beginning and in the title is obviously the most prominent of these. The video game series _Kingdom Hearts_ , in particular Destiny Islands from the original game, largely inspired the epilogue scene. The pathcode teasers practically wrote parts of this story for me, particularly Baekhyun and Jongdae's. Lastly, the ancient Egyptian worship of cats as guardians of the underworld inspired the cat in this fic (who is also lowkey literally my cat SHOUT OUT TO HER, THE BEST KIT!!!!)


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